Does anyone find doing negative pull ups (starting standing up then slowly lower yourself and repeat) helpful? Does it help with doing pull ups or arm strength? And would it be better on a hanging board? Thanks for any help!

If you cant yet do pull ups its not a bad way to get your body used to dealing with the weight. Also try putting your feet up on something placed behind the hangboard and it helps to take some of the weight off. There have been studies done on athletes split into two groups-- one group only did the positive portion of the rep, the other group only did the negatives. The group who only did the negative portion of the reps were much more sore the following days and had greater increases in strength than the group that only did positives. Ill try to find the study.

Do you mean start arms fully bent and then lower? If so, of course it will help with pullups and arm strength. I'm not even sure why you're asking that. It's probably most helpful if you can't do many pullups or want to do more in a set where you've done pullups to failure. It's also a good way to train for one arm pullups along with offset pullups.

If by doing it on a hangboard you mean off the small holds that challenge your grip strength, I'd say NO. If by using a hangboard you mean on the jugs at the top, I don't see why not outside of the fact that some setups will result in your forearms against the board which means your body is leveraged out away from the board increasing torque and difficulty.

The reason I wouldn't do this on the smaller holds of a hangboard is that you're adding dynamic movement into something that is already maxing out an injury prone part of your body - your fingers. There's a reason it's called a hangboard. It's not a pullup on the little edges board. Train your pullup strength and finger strength in different exercises or you won't be efficient at either and you'll be more likely to be injured.

If you cant yet do pull ups its not a bad way to get your body used to dealing with the weight. Also try putting your feet up on something placed behind the hangboard and it helps to take some of the weight off. There have been studies done on athletes split into two groups-- one group only did the positive portion of the rep, the other group only did the negatives. The group who only did the negative portion of the reps were much more sore the following days and had greater increases in strength than the group that only did positives. Ill try to find the study.

Couloirman - this method of training was introduced by a famous bodybuilder back in the 80's after working with Elliot Darton - inventor of the Nautilus gym machines. This bodybuilder - Mike Mentzer and his brother Ray found that concentrating on the negative aspects of training increased muscle strength more than the positive range of motion of any exercise and results in massive gains versus the positive. It's def a proven, scientific method of strength training that would apply to any training method - with or w/o weights or for climbing as well as any other sport per se.